AN EVIL REBORN...

Besides pride being destroyed, I had lost semblance of resembling anything human...

I was put on the fast track to surgery once the vomit cleared. A renowned fruitcake doctor came to read my x-rays and the myriad of other tests done after the beating.

My orbital bone was broken. My nose broken. Jaw cracked. I was truly feeling like Mr. Potato Head after a two-year old on speed got done putting him back together. So some grand surgeon humor was deemed necessary from the doctor. He wanted to peel my whole scull off and put a patch that had been broken in my nose.  He even made a POP sound with his sewer lid lips as he demonstrated what he wanted to do.

Just that easy, huh? Peel off my scull and POP. I can't say I found this humorous. I visualized running his head over with a lopsided 18 wheeler  while making my own POP sound. Schmuck.

MORE DRUGS PLEASE!

So my mother carried more painkillers and prescription pills that everytime she walked her purse sounded like some voodoo rattler snake was going to come out.

But in true hypo-critic form she instilled in me a disdain for drugs. And inimical to that upbringing I got introduced to painkillers that day... Demerol -- hmmmm -- mouth salivates just thinking about-- oh, wait... Back to the story.  So they give me this liquid bag of goodness with a button I could push when the pain started coming. The blastoff button. This stuff could have made a cemetery of dead people come alive to a hip-gyrating Elvis tune.  Hmmmmm....Demerol. Where was I?

So the next day there's a cabal of Cracker Jack box medical degree aficionados of clowns falling in to tell me I wasn't just normally screwed, I was majorly screwed. I refused the head POP thing just so I knew when they put me under the doctor and his posse wasn't having surgery comedy night while I was under anesthesia, or making fun of my oblong shaped melon. For the record I was born with this oblong head way before the Saturday Night Live skit "Coneheads" was on the scene.  Don't like the shape of my head, take it up with God.

Then the family comes and everytime they started shedding alligator tears or my brother started talking, I hit the drug button so his words made sense. Without narcotics my brother makes no sense. On drugs, he makes perfect sense.  He's like a talking trashcan..

...Yeah, that one.  So they could have sawed my willy off and sewed it on my head and I wouldn't have cared as long as that magical button could Calgon all my cares away.

SPINAL TAP the band is better than the real thing.

They stick a horse-long needle into my back and tell you you're going to feel a "little pressure." ARE THEY OUT THEIR MIND!  It felt like Twin Towers were coming down on my lower back.  The repugnant irony is the same people that try to tell you what you're about to feel... have never had a spinal tap themselves!!!!  It's like me stuffing their lips into a garbage disposal and saying you're going to just feel a little tingle on your lips.

Surgery comes rapidly. And the last thing you remember is five seconds of that Darth Vader mask being strapped to your face. And the cold of the room. Hot nurses. I'm naked. Cold Room. It's better they put me under before the jokes start POPPING out at what's underneath my gown -- a turtle trying to run back inside his shell.  There's just no way to sport a hospital gown with any type of pizzazz or style. It's '80's ugly no matter what you do with it. Hurry up and put that mask on... They did.

BAM -- YOU'RE AWAKE!!!

Back in the room. Where's is it????  Nurse sticks it in my hand.  Yeah... the button, good-bye cruel world.

Then there's silence. My Grandma, my brother Oscar the garbage, my Aunt, and my cousin pretty much have their eyes to the floor.  Well, not my brother -- he likes weird things. So I must look weird. And then the 2nd biggest lie when you have a face altering surgery.  It looks like it went well.

So that's why nobody wants to look at me?  Because I look normal?  That well normal?  I looked like the poster boy for the Crypt Keeper.

Hmmmm.... Demerol.

So school's going to start in two weeks. The place of vanity and long-lasting impressions made or killed the first day.  And it wasn't mentioned that now I have a bar in my face for six weeks to keep my jaw and orbital bone sustained until my bones fuse together. I can't even get an honorable mention for prom king with a metal bar stuck in my face. It was concealed except for the GIANT MOSQUITO bite protruding out of my cheek.  It wasn't an Austin Powers Moleee Moleee Moleee moment. I had part of a jungle gym stuck in my face -- Poleee Poleeee Poleee...

But by far my life had changed that fateful day. A part of my heart and hope for the human race had been erased.  Vengeance had replaced that lost piece.  Hate. Anger. It had began to build a city in my heart hellbent on violence, intrigue, and marauding subterfuge. This city had a wall being built that would let few in -- a defense mechanism from defeat.  Wishful thinking was laid to rest in  the graveyard with hope, caring, love, and every other malleable principle that had failed to blossom inside my fruitless mind now scarred and screwed. Power & Manipulation would now become the taskmasters whipping the horses of mayhem to ride harder and carelessly into a world I now called home. Next week on this journey...

ENTER THE GANGS -- the thirst for power. The quest of bedlam. I wanted no prisoners. The hell I would create would be the belltower of my own mental incarceration, ringing upon the drums of personal vindication from my own failures. I had emerged from this near-death experience as a hell-bound Phoenix willing to burn anything in my path or standing in my way -- I didn't want some, I wanted it all... Hmmm... Demerol.

SO CLOSE TO DEATH I COULD SMELL HIS BREATH

HARBINGER OF DOOM

 I was more invested in keeping my cracked melon a secret from my Aunt.

After what I saw the night before and the fact like I had a giant pumpkin on top of my shoulders for a head, I wasn't about to go de-tasseling with the hot high-school chicks that my big head would obscure my sexiness. And the tenacity that my brother would actually come out and ask if I was still going to work showed that his elevator didn't make it past garage level in logic.

No, I was not going to de-tasseling. But when the sun was up through those half-moon windows in the basement, it was enough that I couldn't hide the damage. My brother flipped a KFC biscuit when he saw the dried blood on my shirt and couch -- the pillow. I was a walking broken blood bank, squeezing out pints at wholesale. Now my brother wanted revenge -- the inquisition came out in him and I spilled the beans to who delivered the harrowing blows.

We stormed down to the turd's house that set me up. On the way, we could see the blue bandannas that were shredded in the melee, coated in my blood. The turncoat answered the door and pleaded dumb. Only he didn't have to plead, he was already stupid.

A trail of blood lightly coated the usual spittle and gum marks of the sidewalks.

TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN

We got back to the house and things started to go Twilight Zone. My mind began slipping. I would stare at a clock, or the timer on the VHS -- yeah, this happened in 1993 -- a VHS machine. I would close my eyes and increments of an hour or two would fleet by. Twice I spaced out and my brother was in front of me pushing on me or snapping his fingers. This happened four or five times.

Then the last trance-out I heard my Aunt upstairs cooking. My brother seemed to be more shocked than me. My only fear was she can't catch me -- "Kids, dinner's ready!" my Aunt bellowed. Food was going to taste like a cheap hooker on a stick at this point.

MY MIND: I'll just shield my bad side and eat on the side of the table where she can't see my Freddy Kruger face.

REALITY: You ain't hidin' this shit. ( And yes my Reality was a disgruntled black guy with the fairest Eubonics money can't buy -- Shaft! Whoa ohhhhh... that's Shaft to the 1960's Flash Gordon call to arms.)

I got upstairs according to my plan -- it's working. My Aunt's over doing her thing at the kitchen island -- and about the moment I heard a dish fall and break was about the time that I realized I was so discombobulated that my bad side was the side facing her!!!

Mayhem was unleashed...

The cops were called. My brother spilled the beans. I guess his vitriolic diatribe of revenge went right out the window because we just telegraphed our murderous intent to the cops. Everything was a blur, time was bellicose, robbing me of seconds. All I remember is refusing to go to the hospital. I would not have made a good heroin addict -- I hated needles. I refused to go on account of the needles.

Time flickered again and I was attempting to play some Super Nintendo game downstairs. Yes, another strong indicator that this was 199-ancient 3. As I was playing, I started to feel water in my eyes -- you damn big baby -- almost get your head kicked around like a soccer ball and you're gonna cry about it? That was reality again.

I felt drops on my hands. I rubbed my eyes -- blood. I rubbed my nose -- blood. My mouth - blood. I was bleeding like a -- don't go cliche, don't go cliche, don't go cliche -- a stuck guinea pig. You thought I was going to say "pig."

This is when the fear of God washed over. This is not natural on any level. Next time skip and I was in the emergency room with two fossils for ladies across from me. They were looking at me like I was some spectacle at a wax museum. I wasn't feeling their four eyes dissect my screwed up head. The fam must have been signing me in.

As my one eye was keeping a watch on their four eyes I felt the urge to vomit. And if I could have projected right I would have done it on the look E loos -- but I expectorated blood all over the hospital floor.

This is when I realized things had really failed to turn in my direction. The seriousness was far beyond my comprehension -- this wasn't a scrapped knee I was going to rebound with...

Next week, THEY'VE CREATED A MONSTER...

HELL ARRIVES FIRST CLASS

IMPALED ON DARKNESS

How can you fail something you don't to study for? Thank God I didn't study death and flunked this course.

Maybe death wouldn't take me because my breath was stankin' like two dead bodies in the trunk of a mobster's Lincoln, after having my face pulverized. Now that I was beaten so raw I could be a prime rib rare dinner at an undercooked buffet in Switzerland, I needed to survey the extent of the damage. I had other things to worry about --

Well, if you're dead, that's something to worry about.  But just as scary is when the curtain of the great divide parts and you can see beyond our normal electromagnetic radiation spectrum of vision. Seeing beyond what we're not meant to see. What we're not supposed to see. When the things that go bump in the night that have always been around you, but out of sight, out of mind -- appear.

PRIDE -- it's a deceiver.

I refused to let those two clowns, dumb and dumber, escort me home. The greatest dread was showing my Aunt that I had gotten in a fight when I was supposed to be playing basketball. When I got home, I went around the side with a basketball to disguise the wound if she saw me going down into the basement. She didn't. She was glued in the stupid tube.

Funny thing is time seemed to crawl to a standstill. The beating took all of five minutes. My brother was going into the shower when I left. Fifteen minutes later I was at home and he was coming out.

I passed by wall length mirrors, and I refused to look into them. All the lights were off. Good. My face on the other side couldn't come alive and laugh at me. I went down in the subterranean basement, laid on the couch and faced the pillow side, back to the room. My brother launched downstairs turning the lights on -- I mumbled for him to turn them off. He did. I was working a summer job de-tasseling corn at the time. He reminded me he'd wake me up at the plumber's butt-crack dawn . I was so delirious I agreed. I had no idea the extent of the damage.


KNOCK KNOCK - IT'S HELL, LET ME IN

This is when reality split – the drab tentacles of darkness swirled and twirled, painting a rapid design of death's forthcoming. I had no idea how long I laid. The first was a gut-twisting stench. Tires burning? Acrid. The kind of smell that sticks on you. It was a mixture of sulphur like iron. The iron was my blood dripping down my own throat. Tasting it like some vampire cannibal carnivore about to taste his own flesh.

The door to the top of the stairs opened slowly. I was scared to death it was my Aunt. Low thuds began to reverberate. And then a slow march. The room begin to take on an orangish hue. The flickering of flames danced across the couch and room. To shout reason was to be a fool -- but I told myself someone was playing with the lights. It was one of those circle knobs you could increase or decrease the lightning by twisting. Maybe my cousin was playing tune in Tokyo on the knob. It felt cold. Flames and cold are antithetical to each other. My brain lost reason - departing like some phantom plane over the Bermuda Triangle. IT JUST VANISHED. 

These shadows were racing and darting in and out of sight beside the realm of my battered peripheral vision. One eye literally gave me tunnel vision, I could see like Mr. Magoo in a dark alley – barely anything at tall(British affectation).

The thuds. The footsteps were more than one. But they walked in a synchronized succession. All up, feet down. Feet up,  all down. What was I thinking? What could I think? There was nothing left to think. Maybe it was my Aunt, brother, and cousin. Why'd they'd all march down the stairs at the same time is in the land of logic, and that was gone. I feel the room being filled. As if these with the solemn foots were expanding beyond the dimensions of time and space. 

There was only one emotion left -- FEAR >>>>

I garnered as much strength as I could muster to peer over my own shoulder. Three shrouded shadows, big in stature, walked in a slow march down the stairs. All moving in a row. All moving to the next step below. I did what anyone brass balls tough guy would do -- I SCREAMED LOUDER THAN A BABY!!!

My brother bolted out of his room. Yes, he lived in the basement because he had troll qualities anyway. He's the guy that hides under rocks and makes you pay for crossing a bridge you built.

He turned on the light. The orange flickers were gone. Only the dripping iron was left in my nostrils. Were they gone? Could he not see them and they're still coming for me? No. The soft thuds had stopped. Was this a traumatic hallucination? Lack of oxygen to my brain? Or a real vision into the fourth dimension? I would find out later in life --but not this day. 

Now it was my brother that had the look of horror on his face. He was a mirror for me. His look showed me what I already knew -- I had singlehandledly been beaten to be a stand-in double for the Toxic Avenger. 

My brother was mad. He was emotional. And he was going to get my Aunt -- errrrrrt. Stop. I pleaded that he couldn't. The trouble I'd be in with her would ruin my summer. 

My brother now noticed I had lost all reasonable thought as well. But it was just a beating. That's all. So I thought. Swelling was coming up now. And that's what hid what was really going on. The damage that was really brewing. Each hour I allowed for this go untreated -- was pushing me toward dire consequences that would sling shot me back into the bony hands of death. 

This is where we shall be next post...